R.I.P. Germain
Play Dead
Play Dead, a new film by R.I.P Germain will be screened throughout the day on Saturday 29th March.
The film will be shown exclusively for this one day only within the context of his current show.
Saturday 29 March 2025, 12.00 - 6.00pm
Play Dead is a rampage through the deep stacks, comprised wholly from found footage cannibalised from the steady churn of the UK Drill scene. Testament to R.I.P. Germain’s encyclopedic knowledge of the material, the film deftly weaves through 160 clips, borrowing from the vernacular of the genre to create a meta-music-video that dismantles as it builds. Casting a critical eye on the Drill scene and exercising its own cinematic tools to see how they work and to what ends. Play Dead represents a meditation on unresolved issues of co-option, replication and representation of Black trauma that remain points of open friction in Germain’s work.
Trafficking in all that’s seductive while simultaneously choking the viewer with a feast of hyper-charged motifs and scenes, any scopophilic pleasure the audience may feel is constantly undermined with a creeping unease. Breakneck pace and relentless swagger emerge from a rigorous logic of shot-selection, categorisation of gesture, location and subject matter that lend the work a forensic feel that constantly cuts away at its carnivalesque air. Play Dead begs us to sharpen our attention to the broader trends alive in this footage, and to take seriously the turbulent lived-experience of the rappers and their communities.
R.I.P. Germain
Play Dead, 2025
Digital video (colour, stereo)
4 minutes 28 seconds
Exhibition continues
14 March - 10 May 2025
Thursday - Saturday, 12.00 - 6.00pm
C A B I N E T
132 Tyers Street
Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens
London SE11 5HS
art@cabinet.uk.com
www.cabinet.uk.com
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